Sir Irvine Patnick, who has died aged 83, was the last high-profile Conservative in Sheffield, but his reasons for prominence were not what anyone would have wished. His competent but unremarkable decade as MP for Sheffield Hallam was interrupted by two moments in the limelight, one uncomfortable, the other disastrous.

The first was when he was credited with coining the phrase "socialist republic of South Yorkshire" to describe the politics of a county council which Margaret Thatcher had abolished with relish in 1986. Far from tarnishing the Labour leadership in Sheffield, Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham, the nickname became a battlecry for defenders of, among other reforms, some of the cheapest public transport in the UK.

Far more serious was an undertow of allegations that Patnick had been instrumental in blackening the name of Liverpool football fans in comments straight after the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 which led to newspaper allegations against them, most notoriously in the Sun. Like many other claims and counter-claims, the truth of this had to await the report in September 2012 of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, which found that Patnick had made vigorous comments about drunken and disorderly fans in conversation with the local White's news agency. He referred to them kicking and urinating on police and said that he had seen the bruises.

He subsequently said that he was "deeply and sincerely sorry" for passing on "inaccurate, misleading and plain wrong information" which he said had been given to him by officers from South Yorkshire police. He survived calls from Liverpool's elected mayor, Joe Anderson, and one of the city's Labour MPs, Steve Rotherham, for the removal of the knighthood that was conferred on Patnick in 1994 after he had spent five years as a government whip.

Patnick was born in Sheffield and had a lively Jewish upbringing as part of a large family whose forebears had fled eastern Europe for Yorkshire. In a humbler version of the great diaspora success stories such as the Marks and Burton families in nearby Leeds, they created a secondhand goods empire famous for Patnick's Junkerama store, whose slogans included: "Net curtains – we have enough for every window in Sheffield."

The family were generally sociable and down-to-earth, which helped Patnick's progress from city councillor, from 1967, to leading the opposition on the "socialist republic" county council, from 1973, and finally to representing Hallam, the Tory stronghold in Sheffield, from 1987. He lost his seat in 1997 to the Liberal Democrat Richard Allan, who was succeeded in 2005 by Nick Clegg.

Patnick was unabashedly rightwing, opposing sanctions against South Africa, supporting the death penalty and obstructing gay rights reform. This went with a personable nature and a deep commitment to the Jewish community in Sheffield. Educated at High Storrs grammar school and Sheffield Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University), he was vice-president of the Sheffield Jewish Congregation and Centre, life president of Sheffield Jewish Representative Council and a former national vice-chairman of the Maccabi sports and youth organisation. He enjoyed the rough and tumble of politics and delighted in dishing out as well as taking the inevitable flak that focused on the only Tory MP in South Yorkshire. This gave him a carapace that was useful in his role as party whip, although he regretted that job's ban on making broadcast appearances during which he could taunt Labour's far greater, but sometimes ponderous, Yorkshire army.

Hillsborough was a different matter, and although Patnick knew the area around the football ground well, having fought the safe Labour seat in 1970 and 1979, his acceptance of slurs on the fans is unlikely to be forgiven. He said in September that he was shocked at "the extent of the deceit and cover-up" but added: "I totally accept responsibility for passing such information on without asking further questions."

He had had nearly 24 years to do so, after the Liverpool Labour MP Eric Heffer first questioned the truth of the allegations in the Commons on the very day of the Sun's report. Heffer said that the claims contradicted CCTV film and demanded that Patnick "come up with the so-called evidence".

He is survived by his wife, Lynda, a daughter, Suzanne, and a son, Matthew.

•Cyril Irvine Patnick, politician, born 29 October 1929; died 30 December 2012